I have had a think about this and what I am trying to say is;
The new drive has to be equal in size to or larger than the partitions to be copied ie C:\ partition + the hidden partition.
In my case it relates to drives as I have a complete drive for C:\ and the only way around it for me is to either shrink my C:\ partition or use third party software
I've actually went from a image of a larger drive to a smaller drive without issue as well.
That is, provided the amount used space on the imaged drive does not exceed the free space on the new drive.
Other than that, total disk size shouldn't matter.
I think a lot of it might just be the program used to do the imaging/restore.
Acronis has no issue with it either, and resizes the C partition at the restore.
Sorry if I am not making myself clear I know that it is possible with third party software but I was talking about Windows 7 built in backup, please see snip
You can download Acronis True Image WD Edition Software, this is a free version of Acronis. You must have a WD HDD in your system in order to use it.
Install your old Seagate HDD and the new WD HDD, then clone the old hard drive to the new one.
Starting on page 83 of the User Manual.
It will resize the partitions to fit the larger HDD in automatic mode.
I have just used this to clone a WD HDD to a Seagate HDD, it was easy and had no problems cloning from the failing WD drive.
Seagate also has an Acronis free version.
If you want to test the Seagate drive, D/L and run Seagate SeaTools – Short Drive Self Test and Long Drive Self Test.
Last edited by Dave76; 10 Sep 2011 at 11:36.
You can actually do it with 100% Win 7 software. Acronis and Partition Wizard are two 3rd party products which can make the job easier.
I've done it with exclusively MS software and also using Partition Wizard. I've not used Acronis for this purpose but very reliable people have told me that they personally used Acronis.
Hmmmm....
My recommendation is to get any and all files you need off the dying drive and onto that external drive (you would be better off doing this from a computer with a working OS), then remove any and all drives from your computer except for the new HDD.
Put in the Windows Install disk and completely format the drive and give it a fresh install.
Install just the OS onto the HDD and make sure it works, then get your backup files and everything onto the new drive.
You will need to reinstall all your programs and everything, but it should fix all the problems (unless the old drive dies on you).
Hopefully that helps.
~Lordbob
He has already made an image backup.
True, he needs to make sure that he can mount the vhd from the backup so that he can recover any files later.
He also has a new drive which he desires to use and to simply restore the image that he made to the new drive.
He has a large external usb drive which contains the image backup made with Win 7 Backup and Restore.
If the procedure given in Brink's tutorial for making a full system image backup was followed correctly, then he has made a full image backup.
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